How to Incorporate Gratitude Into Your Daily Life
Keep a Journal
This advice seems to be on everyone’s list of how to practice gratitude. And for good reason – it works! To begin with, the simple act of writing things down helps clarify them and helps you remember them. As Oprah Winfrey says, “I believe you’ve got to write [things] down because there is power, power, power in the written word.”
Keeping a journal has been known to be a great self-therapy technique. This is because when you write, you are using different parts of your brain to access your emotions and memories. The journal actually activates areas of your brain that are related to positive emotions. Rereading what you’ve written further serves to stimulate your brain and promote positive feelings.
Oprah goes on to say, “The greatest thing that I’ve ever done is having a gratitude journal. I started one over 20 years ago, and every day for years now, I write down five things to be grateful for…Appreciating and noting the delights that show up in your life will ensure more goodness comes your way.”
Another article about keeping a gratitude journal quotes UC David psychologist Robert Emmons, the author of Thanks!: How the New Science of Gratitude Can Make You Happier, saying his research show that “that simply keeping a gratitude journal—regularly writing brief reflections on moments for which we’re thankful—can significantly increase well‑being and life satisfaction.”
So, how do you go about starting and maintaining a gratitude journal? Here are a few suggestions provided by the Cleveland Clinic:
· Write at the time of day that works best for you.
· Don’t be overly ambitious. For example, if you can’t keep up with a commitment to write daily, aim for three times a week.
· Don’t dwell on the negative. Look for positive things to focus on throughout your day.
· Make it detailed. The process of writing it down in detail will help you re-enact it.
Gratitude Meditation
Meditation is a helpful practice for many reasons. According to the Mayo Clinic, “Meditation can give you a sense of calm, peace and balance that can benefit both your emotional well-being and your overall health. You can also use it to relax and cope with stress by refocusing your attention on something calming. Meditation can help you learn to stay centered and keep inner peace.”
By focusing your meditation on love and kindness, you can connect more easily to yourself and others. Jon Kabat-Zinn teaches the principles of mindfulness by practicing gratitude to cultivate in-the-moment, non-judgmental awareness. He stresses that “engaging in loving-kindness meditation on a regular basis equips us to deal with the ups and downs of life. It especially enables us to tone down our anger or rage towards another person who may have hurt us. Our expression of gratitude and kindness helps us to restore equanimity in our lives.”
You can find many of Kabat-Zinn’s guided meditations on gratitude online; for example, “Mindfulness, 9 Attitudes.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6M-ZJLmP4b4
Changing Negative Thoughts to Positive One by Focusing on What We are Grateful For
Using a technique called “thought replacement,” you can work on replacing anxious or negative thoughts with positive ones. Focusing on what you are grateful for is a great way to achieve this. Perhaps you’ve noticed that you have a hard time letting go of negative events, while the happiness you get from something positive is fleeting. Why is that so? The simple answer is that people naturally focus on the negative – it seems as it we are biologically hardwired to become stuck on the negative.
You can break that cycle by practicing gratitude. You’ll find that it will increase your happiness and well-being and give you the tools to combat anxiety and depression. Instead of dwelling on the past, you can learn to be more present, which leads to increased happiness. So when you find yourself wound up in negative thoughts, finding something to feel grateful for will help you combat the bad feelings and emotions.
I hope these articles on gratitude will inspire you to try the practice. From here we go on to the concept of resilience, so keep an eye out for my next blog!